yadayad029

A mental disorder where you obsess over something feared, and then in order to alleviate the fear, ritualisticly perform a task or thought until the percieved threat subsides.

Ex you fear that you mother will die of cancer (the obsessive fear), so you perform a task like closing a door a certain number of times thinking this will eliminate the possibility (the compulsion). The compulsion only relieves the fear for a short time, so it will need to performed over and over. Thus you have the disorder.

Most OCD people are completely aware of both irrationality of the fear, and that the compulsion will in some way resolve the threat.

I described that as best I could. Obessions and compulsion can both be a wide variety of things. Fear of germs, obsessive hand washing. Fear of becoming gay, obsessive searching/checking to find out....etc